Pop Buzz UK

Last night’s TV was totally dominated by the final of The X-Factor, ITV1’s flagship talent searching showcase. There were 2 contestants left in the final, vying to be crowned the winner and with it, a £1,000,000 recording contract. We had Ray Quinn, an 18 year old student and former child actor from Liverpool. And also we had Leona Lewis, a 21 year old PA from Hackney in London. The two strated as quite even odds although Leona was tipped by people in the know right from the off. The show took all evening to play out, with a first part of an hour and a half including the 2 singers singing 3 songs of theirs and their mentors choices. Ray did well, but Leona just blew away the audience with 3 near perfect and beautifully sung renditions of classic and well known songs. We also had the obvious and expected special guests, this year those being Take That and Westlife, the latter being Louis Walsh’ own band so no surprises there.

By the time the second part of the final rolled around at 9:30PM, I would have staked my year’s earnings on leona walking away the winner. That didn’t stop it taking another whole hour to find out the decision which had been made my the great British public. Basically this became a massive money making scheme, first to fit more adverts in, and secondly giving presenter Kate Thornton plenty of oppurtunity to will us to phone in and make our favourite the winner. Of course, as always in these instances, there was no clear winner at this point, with it far too close to call to stop phoning in, no, it was almost 50/50… yeah right Kate, I believe that. At last, after sitting through 2 and a half hours of cheese and schmooze, Leona was finally announced the winner. And thank god for that as she is very talented. Ray is good and I’m sure he’ll pop up somewhere along the line with a swing style song propping up the Top 40, but he never hit the levels Leona did throughout the series.

There was just enough time on the Xtra Factor (the spin off show on ITV2 because obviously 2 and half hours isn’t enough airtime to fit everything in that needed to be said) for Simon Cowell to announce that Leona has already been signed up to an American label. It looks like this is one X-Factor winner that could be sticking around a lot longer than the Christmas number one. Unlike the last two winners Steve Brookstein and Shayne Ward, who seem to have disappeared without a trace, Leona possibly looks set for a longer and possibly worldwide career. She’s been called the British Mariah carey and I have to agree, let’s just hope she doesn’t lose it. The big winner again this year will surely be Simon Cowell, who makes money from all the different aspects of The X-Factor and will probably have added another 0 to his piles of cash by the time next year;’s series rolls around. I can’t wait!

The X Factor, X-Factor Final, ITV1, Ray Quinn, Leona Lewis, Kate Thornton, Simon Cowell